Stories of Language, Communication, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kansas Latinx Communities

FAIN: PN-295985-24

Wichita State University (Wichita, KS 67260-9700)
Rachel Showstack (Project Director: May 2023 to present)

The recording of 10 oral history interviews detailing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Spanish-speaking and Indigenous language-speaking communities in Kansas. The project would transcribe and translate the oral histories and make them available online in addition to hosting team and community workshops, producing teaching materials, and creating presentations and publications to share findings.

Alce su Voz (‘Speak Out’), a Kansas-based organization that supports health equity for Spanish speakers and speakers of indigenous languages, will integrate the community practice of testimonio with the Wichita Public Library’s “Tell Your COVID Story” project. The objectives of the proposed project are to a) create and archive a collection of video-recorded pandemic oral histories shared by Spanish speakers and speakers of Latin American indigenous languages who reside in the state of Kansas, (b) produce short videos of segments of those stories for public dissemination, and (c) curate the collection for a variety of public, educational and research purposes. This process will be supported through collaboration with faculty in Wichita State University’s departments of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures and History, and a national team of applied linguists whose scholarship focuses on the intersection between language and health equity for speakers of minoritized languages.